The United Nations police say the security situation in East Timor is generally calm, despite nine incidents in Dili this week alone.

In one incident, a police officer was overpowered by a crowd, who took his pistol, which was subsequently recovered. Elsewhere, forty youths threatened police with steel darts and rocks, after a 17 year-old teenager was arrested for allegedly causing a disturbance.

A UN spokeswoman, Alison Cooper, has told Radio Australia's Connect Asia program, while the incidents are concerning, they should be treated as individual incidents and not as a collective culture of violence.

"All incidents of violence are a concern to us, but we're also realistic and pragmatic, and no society in the world has a zero balance on crime or violence," she said.

Ms Cooper says the UN mandate provides a maximum of 1708 troops in the country, and that number of troops has provided adequate security through tenser times, including controversial parliamentary elections.

She says four months after the elections, tensions have abated, but there are still some spikes of tension.

"We certainly don't believe there's a need to increase our current policing capacity here, but we wouldn't be looking to draw that down in the near future, either," she said.